The King of Rats
Sito Juconkl. This being, dwelling in the underground of Apros, the city of mages, was one of the creations the Black Sage Joma—regarded as one of the greatest archmages in history—had fashioned some three hundred years ago to manage all the rats and refuse within the city.
“Squeak.”
The King of Rats answered my greeting with an arrogance befitting his title. Of course, seeing him in person made the gesture look less arrogant than simply cute and comical.
“First, I offer my sincere respects in the name of the Black Sage Joma.”
The moment Joma’s name left my lips, the King of Rats immediately removed his crown, lowered his head, and paid the deepest, heaviest homage to his creator. Even after three centuries, he still upheld his oath of reverence and obedience toward the one who had made him.
“I am Anak, the Summoner of Deception, who aided the hero Rowell in his battles against the Demon King Thanatos and the goddess Nyx.”
I had not summoned him as an ordinary familiar. As one of Joma’s creations and, at least nominally, one of the Twelve Guardians protecting Apros, no summoner—however skilled—could form a contract with him or force his obedience. Only trade was possible, depending on the circumstances.
“Squeak squeak squeak squeak.”
At my introduction the rat promptly changed his attitude. He had likely assumed I was merely some mediocre summoner seeking aid, but as one of Apros’s guardians he remembered the Demon King’s army that had relentlessly assaulted the city, and he remembered how crucial our help had been in those fierce battles.
“Do you see that cave over there?”
He looked toward the cave at my gesture and nodded.
“I need to go inside, but as you might expect, it’s full of traps. That’s why I’d like your help dealing with them.”
Sito Juconkl fixed me with a rather sharp gaze. Of course, that impression came through our linked consciousness.
“Squeak. Squeak squeak squeak?”
He questioned me as though demanding an explanation—why was I asking this of him instead of my other summons? The nuance carried a clear rebuke: was I really going to send his soldiers to their deaths just to spare my other familiars?
It was a reasonable thing to say. Normally, when summoners called upon Sito Juconkl, they only requested simple scouting or waste disposal. The former carried little risk and required few rats, while the latter actually benefited the rats by providing more food. But ordering them to march straight into a trap was another matter entirely. That was the same as telling them to die.
Still, I knew this was merely part of the negotiation.
“You already order a certain number of them to leap into the flames on a regular basis to keep the population in check, don’t you? And everyone knows you feel no attachment or affection for your other kin, so spare me the obvious act.”
Joma had created Sito Juconkl to manage the city’s rats and prevent their numbers from exceeding a set limit. The rat king had no breeding instinct, and his intelligence was nearly human. How must ordinary rats appear to eyes like his? I doubted his feelings differed much from the way we humans regarded rats.
“Squeak squeak.”
At my words he gave a rather cruel laugh and acknowledged the truth. The emotion that flickered through our link in that instant belonged to a truly ruthless ruler.
“I’m not asking you to keep sending them in until every trap is gone. I’m only asking you to send the rats who would have jumped into the fire this month anyway. Surely that much is something even the guardians of Apros—and one of the people who saved the world—could do as a favor?”
He stared at my face for a moment as though weighing the request, then nodded with clear displeasure. He had probably intended to demand gold or jewels the way he did with other summoners, but if that had been the case I would rather have accepted some losses and sent the magic insects instead.
“Thank you, King of Rats.”
Without even finishing the greeting, he severed the link and leapt from my hand. He must have sensed through the connection that my thanks held no sincerity whatsoever.
Once on the ground, he raised the trident he had fashioned from a fork. His eyes glowed blue, and his entire body became covered in strange runes. The legend that the Black Sage Joma had perfected his own magical system was clearly no exaggeration; the runes were utterly incomprehensible to me.
A powerful flow of mana swirled around us, and small black portals opened across the ground—not summoner’s gates, but genuine two-way portals.
“Squeak!”
The rats that poured through the portals charged into the cave without the slightest hesitation, obeying their cruel king’s irritable command. Their unified advance resembled a raging torrent. Thousands—easily tens of thousands—of black rats streamed endlessly into the cave. Occasional explosions and mechanical sounds rang out, but they were drowned beneath the thunder of countless tiny feet and squeals.
The tide of rats continued pouring into the cave for some time. Just as the black flood began to thin, the link reconnected and Sito Juconkl conveyed his intention to depart.
“Squeak. Squeak squeak squeak squeak.”
He had committed far more troops than I had requested, and claimed that this was more than enough courtesy on his part.
“Squeak squeak squeak squeak.”
Furthermore, although none of the rats had yet reached the end of the cave, every mechanical trap along their path had been disabled and every trap-type magic circle had been erased. He promised the process would continue until the last rat died.
“But some of your soldiers might still be left behind, no?”
“Squeak?”
The consciousness that answered “So?” carried a cruel amusement. It was his own brand of humor. Beneath it lay a bitter self-mockery and something darker that resonated strangely within my own chest.
“Haha… I see.”
Seeming pleased by my reaction, he laughed briefly before turning toward the portal he had opened.
“Squeak squeak squeak squeak.”
At the portal’s edge he glanced back and offered a short farewell.
“Yes. Then I’ll see you again next time.”
“Squeak squeak.”
With a half-serious joke about collecting proper payment next time, he vanished into the portal. All the portals on the ground closed behind him.
“Well then…”
I began walking toward the cave. It was time to go inside myself. Under normal circumstances it would have been safer and more efficient to keep sending summons, but I was genuinely curious about the man’s intentions, and if possible I wanted to finish this personally.
With a small orb of light floating before me, I stepped into the cave.
The interior was wider than it had appeared from outside. Then again, they had to bring horses through, so it made sense. I found myself impressed that they had managed to lead the animals inside at all. From experience I knew how difficult and troublesome it was to bring horses into a cave—especially one with such uneven floors, where the person doing the leading suffered far more than the horses.
A foul stench suddenly assaulted my nose. The floor was littered with countless rat corpses, bloodstains, broken arrow launchers, and stone-carved spears and blades. Sharp spikes jutted from the ground, many of them impaled with layers of rats.
“They certainly put some effort into this. I’ll give them that.”
The fact that so many rats had been skewered so deeply meant the spikes had launched upward from the floor. Preparing mechanical devices like this inside the cave showed real dedication to the traps.
More ingeniously designed and precisely crafted mechanical traps and magic circles followed, and the number of rat corpses steadily increased. The stench grew worse as well.
Pinching my nose did nothing. Although the bodies had not yet begun to rot, these were ordinary rats that had lived in filthy sewers and garbage pits—unlike Sito Juconkl—and there were simply too many of them.
At least the sections where the corpses had been burned to ash were bearable. Whether it was poison gas or a curse, passing through areas where hundreds or thousands of rats had died instantly made breathing painful.
There were several more large-scale traps like that. Then, just as the rat corpses seemed to thin out…
“So this was the last of them.”
Arrows and boulders flew from every direction, triggering my barrier, while black serpents made of light rose from the floor and lunged at me in unison. Death Serpents—the strongest curse spell available through scroll magic.
“Looks like they used at least thirty of them.”
The black serpents vanished against the barrier, shattering one layer in the process, but it was no real problem. I did not know exactly how deep the cave went, yet comparing the traces left by the spells that had already activated and the magic circles damaged by the rats, both the quality and quantity of this trap were suddenly several times greater than before.
No matter how many traps the rats had failed to disarm, it was clear we were nearly at the end.
They were certainly impressive traps. Simply installing this many would have required tremendous effort and an enormous sum of money. Their quality was high enough that any ordinary adventurer party, mercenary band, or knight order would likely have been wiped out within minutes of entering.
But that was only by ordinary standards.
“You really tried to target my companions with something this crude?”
It was far too low-level to believe. Some of the traps would have been troublesome if Aegina, Lauti, or Orcan had encountered them while off guard, but even then they would not have been lethal. In the worst case they could simply retreat.
Moreover, Rowell, Medrup, or Bagloros would have passed through without so much as a scratch—I was certain of it.
Of course, it was possible the culprit had simply misjudged their abilities, but unlike me, whose exploits were barely known, the others had plenty of well-documented feats that spoke to their true strength.
“So my companions weren’t the targets after all?”
Then why did this cave exist in the first place? As I had thought earlier, these traps could not have been built in just a day or two. If my companions were not the goal, then who among the people connected to me would require traps of this scale?
“…Maybe it had nothing to do with me and they just decided to use it in a hurry?”
Had they prepared it for an entirely different operation and simply repurposed it because they were pressed for time? If so, then whoever it was clearly excelled at improvisation—far more than I did.
“Well, either way, I’ll find out soon enough.”
As expected, few traps remained after that. Aside from one more layer of my barrier being stripped away, I passed through unscathed and finally reached the end of the cave.
“How troublesome.”
Nothing awaited me at the end. Apart from the way I had come, the space was blocked by rough stone walls on all sides. With no traps or other traces remaining, it looked like a dead end at first glance.
“You don’t want me turning back either, so why not just open it in advance?”
I called the spirits. The earth spirits answered, and I let them dwell within the stone walls.
“As I thought.”
Through soul resonance I could clearly sense the awkward sections between the walls and the space beyond. A hidden door. At my gesture and will, the sections of rock that formed the secret wall slowly took on humanoid shapes and stepped forward.